Saucy Parisiennes in bubble skirts and bunny ears and polished two-tone sheath dresses and wrap coats brought the French capital's fall 2009-winter 2010 collections to a close on Thursday, wrapping up displays that were heavy on abbreviated cocktail numbers, peaked shoulders and black.
Louis Vuitton was on-trend with a collection of short flirty dresses that exploded with pleats, ruffles, puff sleeves and bubble skirts and dripped with chic Parisian sensuality.
Paris Fashion Week - A Wrapup: Images from the catwalk on Day 9
The show also included a line of monogram totes and cute clutches that looked likely to help the storied French label to weather the financial crisis.
At Prada second line Miu Miu, woolen wrap coats and dresses with low-sling tie belts and tromp l'oeil sheath dresses won the approval of front-row guest Jessica Alba. The U.S. actress said she'd made a lightening trip to the French capital for the show, which she praised as "amazing."
"If you put any of these clothes on, you can't go wrong, they're very chic and beautiful," the "Fantastic Four" star told The Associated Press.
Other shows Thursday included Russian label Chapurin, which was on-trend with short, asymmetrical draped dresses. For her debut Paris show, Egyptian designer Marie Bishara sent out day coats and A-line skirts in dusty pink and black wool covered with little pompoms.
Taiwanese-born designer Shiatzy Chen continued melding East and West with a collection of layered looks in rich brocades, layering long coats with oversized collars over Chinese-style jackets over skirts over skinny pants. One eye-catching look was an evening gown in lacquer red that spilled tulle out from underneath its trailing skirt.
Paris' nine-day Fashion Week included two standout displays by Britain's John Galliano, who delivered an Asian-flavored collection at Christian Dior and sent out Russian brides dripping with embroidery and tinkling coins at his own label.
Kenzo also looked to Mother Russia for inspiration, while heritage saddlemaker Hermes sent out Amelia Earhart look-alikes in buttery leather aviator jackets, hoods and shades.
Chanel, Lanvin, Christian Lacroix and Givency stayed the course, delivering ravishing collections that remained true to the spirit of each house.
Indian designer Manish Arora was a riot of hothouse colors and outrageous sculpted shapes with an outrageously inventive collection that felt a bit like "The Jungle Book" as remade by "The Fly" director David Cronenberg.
Alexander McQueen's models negotiated a monstrous pile of stylized rubbish in the middle of the catwalk in skirt suits and black evening gowns that looked as if they'd been made from garbage bags. It was beauty morphed into ugliness that became something approaching sublime.
Sublime, too, was the long lean nocturnal silhouette at Nina Ricci, whose Belgian designer Olivier Theyskens plumbed the depths of his subconscious to come up with the shimmering, droopy peaked shoulder gowns perched on gravity defying heel-less platforms.
The global financial meltdown was the elephant in the room at the Paris shows. Few designers or even buyers deigned to discuss the subject and tried to keep a sunny outlook even as major retailers like Nieman Marcus announced huge losses.
LOUIS VUITTON
Sophisticated Parisiennes who blend classiness and playful sensuality in just the right doses inspired Vuitton's blockbuster U.S. designer Marc Jacobs, who sent out saucy demoiselles in abbreviated cocktail looks with pleating, draping and lots of volume. Starched satin head wraps, like Playboy bunny ears, topped off the looks.
Jacobs said he had had several French models, including former Chanel muse Ines de la Fressange, in mind.
"All these wonderful French women have inspired great designers that I have always respected and admired and have always just had that joie de vivre, that joie de fashion and that joie de mode," Jacobs, who was sporting a pair of black shorts-cum-skirt, told reporters backstage.
Like many of his fellow Paris designers, Jacobs centered the collection around flirty cocktail dresses. The bodices were expertly draped, with full, ravishing shoulders and bubble skirts. Black lace gave some looks a more overtly sexual charge - particularly those paired with thigh-high, heeled boots in zippered black or gold patent leather.
Models clutched a selection of handbags as they walked the catwalk, set up like a Parisian salon in a tent in a Louvre courtyard. Bags are a major cash cow for the label, which began as a luggage-maker. Little black totes with gold monograms, quilted leather clutches and velvety flap closure purses with chain straps looked like surefire hits.
Antoine Arnault, the son of Vuitton parent company LVMH's chairman and CEO Bernard Arnault, praised the handbags as "to lose your mind" for.
Asked about the label's relationship with Jacobs, who has garnered praise for his work on his eponymous line and at Vuitton, Arnault said: "It's like working with Picasso."
MIU MIU
Woolen wrap coats with dramatic necklines and low-slung tie belts were at the heart of a polished collection that also included coats shorn of their sleeves with hips-circling ties and tromp l'oeil sheath dresses that looked like a shirt with a dramatic V-neck tucked into a pencil skirt.
Front-row guest Jessica Alba said she was lusting after a dress with a sheer aqua bodice with a burgundy skirt and one of the mid-calf-length A-line skirts that were paired with bras and fur-lined scarves cinched onto the hips with tie belts.
"Obviously, I couldn't just wear a bra, I'd have to wear a blouse," she said with a laugh.
The bras, in neutral tones, gave the collection the slightly kinky, subversive touch that has come to be associated with Miu Miu - which takes its name from a nickname for designer Miuccia Prada.
The show - in an intimate hall in a town house in Paris' moneyed 16th district - had a cinematic quality: Dialogue from old French, Italian and German movies made up the soundtrack, and some of the looks appeared to be channeling the elegant sixties star Romy Schneider.
Still, Thursday's show was far from an exercise in copy and paste. Designer Prada left her own distinctive mark on the collection, which, with its clean lines stood out from the voluminous, big-shouldered looks at many other Paris labels.
